1. Field of the invention.
The present invention relates to animal husbandry and more particularly to means for extracting an unborn calf from the mother cow or assisting parturition.
When the natural means of birth fails for any one several reasons it is usually necessary to assist the mother cow in parturition to save the life of both the calf and cow. Young cows generally have difficulty in calving the first time and it is usually impractical, economically, with stock cattle, to await the services of a veterinarian. The function of assisting a mother cow can usually be performed by the rancher having one of the devices comprising this invention.
2. Description of the prior art.
Prior patents disclosing apparatus for assisting parturition of animals, such as cows, have generally comprised a breeching bar engaging the haunches of the mother animal which is provided with an elongated shaft supporting a hand operated winch usually provided with ratchet means which produces a generally unsatisfactory jerky and uneven pulling action on the animal resulting in injury to the calf or its mother. Further, a ratchet type winch involves more tooling in construction, than a simple windlass, for example, and when the line is fully wound on a ratchet type winch it is not easily released in a free wheeling action for extending its line for attachment to the unborn animal when setting up the device to assist the birth.
This invention overcomes the above disadvantages by providing a reel axially connected with a shaft and provided with a handle for operation in a windlass fashion to provide a steady and slow pull on the unborn animal. The device further includes means for maintaining tension on an obstetrical member on which tension is automatically maintained by friction grip means surrounding and gripping the shaft when the windlass action is stopped with the friction grip means being released by tension reapplied to the windlass line to continue the pulling operation.